One of the ways to improve your drawing skills is to join an art community – place, where artists share common goals: improve and learn from each other, promote their work online and have fun designing!
And here you will find a list of Art Groups on Facebook for digital painters that are worth joining in.
Why join an online Art Group?
…Isn’t it better to join a drawing class and meet other artists in real life?
Not everyone has the possibility to join an art group, because there may not be one in their city. I am well aware of this since I was raised in a small, rural village – there weren’t any activities/groups for kids or adults where they could develop their talents.
But Thank God for the Internet! We can join an online art group whenever we live (well… as long as there’s the internet connection).
Over a few years, I was a member of tens of art groups.
Some were bad, some good, and I will write about them from my personal experience, but I’m going to write objectively as possible – I hope the list of the Art Groups on Facebook will save you some time and help you to find the right group you can join and practice with other artists.
And what makes Art Group on Facebook better than other online art communities?
Facebook groups took over forums, along with other sites like Reddit and amino app groups. Of course, there is still a place for forums for niche interests and discussions.
But already having a Facebook account makes it easier to join a certain group. And you can join many different groups by having just one account, which is one of the biggest advantages of having a Facebook account – you don’t have to create a new account every time as in registering to regular forums.
The conclusion here is, that you can see posts of fellow artists from different groups in one place – your timeline.
If not that, I would miss really interesting posts and art tips! I also love the possibility to save certain posts and hide posts of people you don’t want to see/read (if they post NSFW content)
The second reason is making the connections – I think it’s easier to make friends and networking on Facebook than on forums.
Are there disadvantages?
Yes, the same as on other sites and generally on the internet – don’t reveal too much personal information. Thankfully, there’s an option on Facebook that allows only your closest friends to see your friend list and posts.
List of Art Groups on Facebook
Level up
A Free Online Art for Teaching and Sharing
Level up is one of the biggest art groups for digital artists! It has over 100,000 members. You can meet here people from all around the world – hobbyists and professionals.
The group was created by Wojtek Fus, Darek Zabrocki and Jonas De Ro, professional artists working at various project (such as “Detroit: Become human” – Wojtek Fus, “Guardians of the Galaxy” – Jonas De Ro, “Love, Death and Robots” – Darek Zabrocki).
You can encounter here not only illustrations and concept arts, but animations and 3d models as well!
There are many professional artists who are happy to help, so if I have a problem with my illustration and want to ask for a piece of advice – that’s the group I’m posting my art.
One of the way to help the artist is by creating an overpainting, so don’t get surprised is someone posts a reply with your re-painted illustration. It’s a huge relief when someone takes your painting and makes corrections directly on them – sometimes we may still have a problem correcting an art even after a long post with critique.
Group Rules:
The group has strict rules which you have to abide by (the group has thousands of members, you wouldn’t want to have spammy posts on your timeline).
First, this is not a self-promotion group. Don’t spam with your sites, and don’t post commercial links!
This is a site where you can ask for C&C – Critique and Comments, that will help you to improve your artwork.
Breaking the rules will get you removed or possibly banned!
Virtual Plein Air
A group to share “Virtual Plein Air” paintings based off google street view.
The group was created after Timothy Rodriguez’s idea in 2014 and has over 28000 members.
It’s rules are simple. Find an interesting view in Google Street view, and draw it!
Street View is a virtual reflection of our surroundings in Google Maps, consisting of millions of panoramic photos. Street View content comes from two sources – Google employees and Google’s co-founders. Thanks to their combined efforts, people around the world can virtually explore new places.
When you post your digital painting, remember to include the link to your Google’s Street view location!
You can learn more about Virtual Plein Air in this article: What is Virtual Plein Air Painting?
Character Design challenge
Character Design Challenge is an online art community focused on Character Design.
The group was created in 2014 and has over 190 000 members
The official website of this Art Group is characterdesignreferences.com – an independent webzine dedicated to sequential, illustrative and concept art from animation, games and comics.
Once a month Character Design Challenge members gather here to challenge each other in a contest in which they share their unique designs of characters, based on a common theme, along with the links to promote their blogs and online stores.
The finest designs win the challenge and a new theme is announced on the 7th day of each month. If your goal is to promote your work and build a following of fans online, but also get out of your comfort zone, challenge yourself, make new friends and build your portfolio with other artists who share the same passion, you’ve come to the right place.
The contest is open exclusively to 2D artworks, created both digitally or traditionally.
The winner’s art will be published on the Character Design Challenge social media: Instagram, Tumbr, Twitter and the offcial website.
To sum up – this is a group where you can train your skills in designing characters, and it’s advised to not focus too much on drawing backgrounds.
Don’t post here random artworks and ask for advice, or promote your sites.
Draw or Die
The mission of Draw or Die, or in short – DoD, is to create an art community where artists from all around the world pitch in to help the other members improve their skills.
The groups was created in 2013 and has over 23,000 members.
There are certain rules you have to abide
Most importantly, when you post, you must ask for critiques, and you need to describe what part of your illustration you need help with. Don’t just write ‘C&C’ but ask specific questions.
Also, when you give critiques/pieces of advice, it should be constructive, not discouraging.
You can post links to resources and educational sites/videos – but you have to reach out to the Admin to get his approval. If the admin gives the okay, include which admin gave the approval so the other mods and admins know to not remove it.
Also, you can post resources as long as they are free.
The group isn’t only for digital artists – you can also post here artworks created with traditional media.
Ten thousand hours
You know there’s this belief, that if you spend 10 000 hours on practicing a certain skill, you will become really good at it.
This statement comes from the book “Outliers“, where Malcolm Gladwell makes the case it takes about 10,000 hours to get great at something. And that’s why the group was named “Ten Thousand hours“.
This is a group that strongly focuses on improving your drawing skills and shares tons of educational resources.
Ten Thousand hours Group was created in 2015 and has over 80 000 members.
It’s open for 2d artists as well as 3d artists and Animators: posts can be comprised of 2D art, or 3D art, video, time-lapse sessions, images.
Rules:
People are allowed to post finished artworks, but the main focus on the group are WIPs – projects that are still “work in progress”.
Don’t post anything that is not related to this group. No posting memes, no self-promotion.
In the rules is stated to use first a Google search before asking something on the group (most likely it was already answered). It helps to avoid spammy posts.
Anatomy for Artists – Proko
The group Anatomy for Artists – Proko was created by Stan Prokopenko, the created of Proko.com
This is a community for students of the Human Anatomy course by Proko. Post your exercises, critique each other’s work, ask questions, post useful anatomy content, and basically help one another learn anatomy of the human body.
However, if you want to practise drawin anatomy you can join the group as well.
You can only post Anatomy related content. This group is for the students of Anatomy of the Human Body Course – so don’t spam the group with any irrelevant artworks or links.
The group was created in 2014 and has over 40 000 members
Digital Artists Group
Digital Artists Group is a Facebook Art Group created for sharing and learning about Digital Art, meaning anyone at any skill level can join. If you are an artist, hobbyist or spectator of digital art, then this is the group for you.
It’s dedicated only for digital artists only.
The group was created on 2016 and has over 70 000 members
The Digital Artists Group is dedicated to art created through the means of digital technology, meaning anything that was significantly digitally made can be shared. This includes hybrids, animations, photography, photo manipulation, cinematography, CGI, music, .etc
You can post on this group your art page – just remember to include your art in the post.
This is one of the most active groups and my favorite ones. People share here not only their art, but also interesting things related to digital painting, which in other groups is forbidden and considered as spam. So, Art Memes are allowed as well as some basic question.
Art Buddies
The group was created on 2013 and has over 30 000 members.
The groups is for everyone who created art – 2d or 3d, and it doesn’t matter if you do it digitally or traditionally.
Posting your own art page is only allowed when you’ll post your work with it. Also, if you want to share someone’s artwork, share it from the original source. However, straight up ads for your store or business will be removed and result in a ban.
Anything not related to art will be removed.
I spotted here a few spammy posts, but overall, spam here is rare and doesn’t disturb. To combat spam, new members’ content must be reviewed by an admin then pre-approval will be given. Pre-approval will be revoked in the event of rule-breaking
Artcore
Artcore was founded by Luke Bailet in 2014 and has over 18 000 members.
Artcore is an artistic community, designed and aimed at ALL visual artists. Since its creation, it has grown incredibly, acquiring talent from around the world in all sorts of arts.
Artcore is here to provide the opportunity for artists to share their work, receive honest feedback and become better, with the help of others. It is a platform for social interaction of like-minded people, in a peaceful and very friendly manner.
It’s strongly forbidden to post your pages here, spam or rude comments will result in permanently banning you from the group.
Loish’s digital art group
This Art Group was created by Loish in 2018 and has over 68 000 members.
Join the group to get tips and advice about digital art, as well as exchange ideas and inspiration. It’s intended as a place for artists and art appreciators to connect with one another.
To join, please take the time to answer questions – if you don’t answer them, your request to join may be rejected!
If you have been accepted, read the rules & guidelines before interacting with the group.
About the Rules
The group has… a pretty long list of rules. I mean, better make yourself a coffee before starting to read.
The rules are confusing for some members, there are comments of people asking for help with approving their posts, since they fulfill all requirements and their posts are deleted – without any answers.
It’s troublesome to the point that “post submission flowcharts” were created.
The group has a lot of members, and since every post has to be approved by admins, it can take some time before it will be accepted.
Despite these inconveniences, it’s worth joining the group since you can meet here really great artists, and I can say without any worry that the group is spam-free.
Virtual Painting
Virtual Painting is a group where you can share your art created in VR.
It was created in 2016 and has over 7 000 members.
It’s a group where people can share their Art created in tools like Quill and Tiltbrush.
If you paint brush strokes in space and you “paint” the light and your approach is like traditional painting but in 3D space.
Tilt brush is kind of an exception since they have lit brush strokes but it will still count as a painting if the approach is like painting. This includes animated brush strokes such as glow or jiggle but excludes “any” hand animated content. Whenever something is hand animated it would go into the virtual animation group.
VR picture/photo Collages do not belong in here.
Daily Spitpaint
The daily spitpaint activity was started in May 2013 by Atey Ghailan and Ross Grams.
They had heard Craig Mullins talk about how professional artists need to schedule “sandbox time” to try out new techniques, get out of their comfort zone, and not be afraid to fail completely. So they met on Skype each day, came up with topics, and painted them for 30 minutes.
Soon it grew to roughly the current “founding team” of 6 or 7 artists. The creators started http://spitpainting.tumblr.com/ to post all their speedpaints, but before long they got so many requests to join that they
decided to create this Facebook group.
Spitpainting is supposed to be a hard exercise. It’s to train you to generate ideas fast, paint fast, and get out of your comfort zone. You are supposed to fail. There is no “finish”, you’re done when the timer beeps. Think of it as a thumbnail.
If you want the Real Daily Spitpaint challenge, take a random topic and start the timer immediately, so you don’t have any extra time to brainstorm. You can also add other challenges like “round brush only”, “no opacity control”, “start with a bright pink background and leave it showing through”, “lasso and gradient tools only”, “paint with your right foot/tail”, etc.
7 hours a Week
The 7 hours a Week group was created in 2015 and has over 3 000 members.
You can post here both, digital and traditional artworks.
Each week a new topic is posted – you can join the challenge or think of your own.
Rules
No self-promotion is allowed. No personal pieces also, just studies. There will be two warnings, then you will be banned.
Daily Sketching Workout
Daily Sketching Workout’s mission is to provide motivation and inspiration for anyone wanting to practice sketching and to encourage them to keep drawing – every day! Each day we give you a topic – it could be anything! You then have to sketch the chosen subject and upload your image to the group page. Easy!
If you struggle to stick to exercise plans like this, we have some extra incentive. Each week a champion sketch is selected from the week’s subjects and the winner receives a well-deserved prize!
If you’d like to catch up with previous weeks’ topics, you can find them in our Files section. Now that’s out the way, please feel free to join our group and start sketching!
Art Commission Groups on Facebook
Looking for art – and artists who do commissions.
Art Comission
